


The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Theta of Houses Lungbarrow and Oakden (as related by his father, and not meant for publication). Chapter One.

by aralias



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Curtain Fic, Kidfic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-20
Updated: 2011-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 10:15:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It had come as no real surprise to the Doctor that the Master owned a fully functional genetic loom.</i> Kidfic in which Five and Ainley!Master are living together for some reason and have a kid and also wacky parenting misadventures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Theta of Houses Lungbarrow and Oakden (as related by his father, and not meant for publication). Chapter One.

**Author's Note:**

> When it says 'Chapter one' in the title it only means that it's the very earliest part of David's life, and not that I have another 50,000 words ready to spring on you in a couple of months. This is all I shall write in this universe (98% certain).

It had come as no real surprise to the Doctor that the Master owned a fully functional genetic loom. Apparently, he had stolen it at the same time as he had stolen his TARDIS. Apparently, he had done this entirely because House Oakden would find its absence incredibly annoying, and it was his pleasure to annoy them. Apparently, he hadn’t so much as looked at it since that time, and was quite surprised that it still appeared to work.

Frankly, the Doctor had his doubts about most of this story, but, being of a naturally mendacious disposition himself, he had pretended to accept it. Needling the Master about this would be a bad start to — he forced himself to think it — _raising a child together_. That it was the two of them was a bad enough start in and of itself, but it was too late to turn back now. The Doctor’s right hand was firmly stuck to the gene-plate on his side of the egg-shaped loom; his biological information was trickling slowly into its memory banks. Across the other side of the loom, the Master’s un-gloved hand was equally stuck, and his genes were being equally assessed.

“Not having second thoughts, Doctor?” the Master asked smugly, presumably because he knew that a) the Doctor was and b) that he knew how impossible it was to stop the process.

“Absolutely not,” the Doctor said. “Just because a spur of the moment decision is made under the influence of a vast quantity of alcohol doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be acted upon immediately the next morning. That’s what I always say.”

“So, you’re not nervous?”

“No,” the Doctor lied. “Why would I be? I don’t know why we didn’t do this years ago.”

“Don’t you?” the Master asked.

The Doctor gave him an exasperated look that he hoped implied all of _“yes, all right, because you were hardly ever around and when you were, you kept trying to kill me, and even if you had been nicer to me, I still wouldn’t have wanted your children. I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to have them now if you hadn’t liquored me up first, which is why you did it.”_

At least some of this seemed to have been conveyed, because the Master chuckled into his collar. In response, the Doctor subtly altered his look so that it now read, _“I’m not surprised you find this amusing, but you haven’t had any children of your own. Just wait until you’re trying to brush vomit out of your velvet. I doubt you’ll find it quite so amusing then.”_ The Master’s answering smirk said quite clearly that he thought he could handle it.

The Doctor tried to drum his fingers against the loom, but they were still stuck fast. He huffed in exasperation, and the Master said, “Don’t worry, Doctor. The process is nearly complete.”

“Thank you, I’m fine,” the Doctor said, perhaps a bit too brightly. “You must have done something to the machine, or Oakden had a better one than we did, because it’s not as painful as last time. I remembered it—” He broke off with a cry.

As if in response, the gentle, ignorable trickle of DNA had become a wave of remorseless agony. The Doctor felt each of his inner organs contract and attempt to relocate themselves into his right arm, pulling his cardio-vascular system with them as they did so. His knees buckled, and he tried to find something to hold onto with his other hand, but the loom’s side was smooth and unyielding.

“Yes,” the Master said through gritted teeth. “I think it was just getting started. Is this more familiar?”

The Doctor groaned and gasped. He shut his eyes in case this helped, which it didn’t.

In previous incarnations he had stood up very well to torture. He had smiled at the people racking him, and joked while others approached him with hot pokers. Unfortunately, this sort of behaviour mostly encouraged them to hurt him even more to see if he could keep it up, and so in his current body the Doctor put on a good show of distress. What was happening to him now felt considerably worse than being racked, and the Doctor found his half-choked wails of suffering coming very easily.

In a brief respite, he opened his eyes and found, as he gasped for air, the Master staring at him, his mouth slightly open. _What am I doing,_ the Doctor managed to think, _having a child with a man like—_ A second wave of agony hit him, and it was worse than the first. In fact, it was worse than anything he’d experienced during the looming of his first child. _Trust Oakden,_ the Doctor thought bitterly in between whimpers.

Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The Doctor peeled his hand away from the loom and flexed his fingers: none of them seemed to be broken. He breathed and found his lungs were still working, and the fast beating of his hearts confirmed they were still where they ought to be. He was about to make some comment to the Master about his house being sadistic bastards when the Master grabbed him and landed a poorly aimed kiss on his ear.

“Really?” the Doctor asked weakly as he was pressed (not unwillingly) to the floor. “Now? But—”

“I can’t think of a better time,” the Master insisted. By this time he had regained enough control to try for the Doctor’s mouth again, and kissed him bruisingly, before moving down to unsnap his braces. “We’ve just created life, Doctor. Surely you agree that deserves to be celebrated.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” the Doctor agreed, and allowed himself to be ravaged on the console room floor.

*

“I still don’t really think it’s appropriate,” he said about an hour later. They were both lying naked on the floor, and the Doctor was stroking the Master’s beard absently with one hand. “Children are supposed to be given soothing music and great works of literature in the loom, aren’t they? Not—”

“Animalistic groans?” the Master offered, grinning.

“Precisely,” the Doctor said. He drew his hand back slightly so that the Master could kiss his palm. “I hope we haven’t damaged its chances of being a productive member of Time Lord society.”

“You have only yourself to blame, if we have,” the Master told him. “I would be reading the works of Morophinnaghrana the Elder to it right now, if you hadn’t put on such a lewd display during the genetic transfer.”

“Those were yowls of pain.”

“I know,” the Master said soothingly. He rolled over onto the Doctor, and bit his nipple hard enough to make the Doctor audibly protest. “But you do them so beautifully.”

“I suppose we’ll just have to do better over the rest of the gestation period,” the Doctor mused as the Master began to lick bits of his chest. The sex had made him feel a lot more positive. He was particularly looking forward to the bit before the child actually arrived, and was now picturing long evenings that began with him reading aloud to the loom from his favourite novels, and ended with the Master being very nice to him for being such a good sport about the whole baby thing.

“What do you mean?” the Master asked the Doctor’s stomach.

“Well,” the Doctor squirmed as the Master tongue entered his bellybutton, as you said, Morophinnaghrana is generally deemed important pre-natal reading and, although I’ve never been fond of her work, I think the theory is sound. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that children are affected by their earliest experiences. I thought I’d read Dickens—”

“I meant,” the Master said returning to head height, “ _what_ gestation period?”

“Yes, I thought you might mean that,” the Doctor said, hearing his voice speed up with panic. “The gestation period. The period of gestation between conception and birth.”

“I fear this is another distinction between our houses,” the Master explained. “How long do you think we have?”

“Five years,” the Doctor said. “Meanwhile, what we actually have is closer to...?” _At least a year,_ he thought. _Please let it be at least a year. More than enough time to get through ‘David Copperfield’ and well into ‘Our Mutual Friend’._

The Master leaned up over the Doctor’s head and pressed his hand to the side of the loom. He frowned in concentration, and drew back. “Three minutes.”

“Excellent,” the Doctor said. “Well, we’d better get dressed then, hadn’t we?” He sat up, pushing the Master off himself as he did so, and began collecting his clothes. Trousers, shirt, socks, ARGH, ARGH, ARGH, shoes, underpants, jumper. “Isn’t it wonderful," he observed, "how you can agree to have a child and then get one in less time than it takes the French to eat a good dinner?”

“I should, perhaps, have warned you there might be differences,” the Master admitted.

“Some would say that, yes,” the Doctor said, as he pulled on his trousers. “Some would definitely say that, but not me, Master, because I _thrive_ on the unexpected.”

“I would never have guessed,” the Master said as the Doctor struggled with his braces and was forced to abandon them. “Ah. I believe it’s happening.”

“What? Where?”

Wearing only one shoe and — he realised belatedly — his jumper on back-to-front, the Doctor rushed over to where the Master stood next to the loom. As he struggled to right his jumper, there was a creak and the smooth side of the machine split open. The Doctor began to take the Master’s hand, then remembered whom each of them was, and tried instead to stick his hand in the pocket of a coat he wasn’t wearing. This caused a rather awkward spasm of his arm, but the Master seemed not to have noticed. Nor had he noticed that he was still completely naked. He was staring at the loom with an expression of open longing usually reserved for the Doctor himself that only intensified as he reached into the machine and picked up the small boy lying within it.

Their son, the Doctor saw, looked about as old as a human toddler. This was, to the best of his knowledge, quite usual for Time Tots. He did his best not to feel disappointed that Oakden, apparently so keen on accelerating the process in its early stage, had not moved straight onto looming adults. He remembered the Master as a very young child, of course, but since Koschei had caused almost as much havoc then as he was later going to wreak on the universe, it was plausible that they might have thought better of it since.

“Hello,” the Master rumbled. “I’m your daddy. Yes, that’s right,” he said as the boy prodded his nose with a finger and laughed. “Daddy.”

The Doctor watched this display in a stunned silence. That the Master had chosen ‘daddy’ rather than something more respectable like ‘fa’ or ‘papa’ was surprising enough, but there was his actual second son, an actual living being in the Master’s arms. And although he didn’t seem to be as tall or as articulate as the Doctor might have hoped, he was quite… _sweet_ : a tiny cherubic thing held by a man who often looked a lot like Satan and today looked more like a young Father Christmas.

The Master rearranged the child against his shoulder so he only needed one arm for support, and used the other to redirect the hand against his nose so that it pointed instead at the Doctor. “And that’s your other daddy. No, don’t worry, his hair isn’t usually that frightening.”

“Oh, put some clothes on,” the Doctor retorted, trying to smooth down his hair, which was presumably sticking out in some ludicrous manner.

The Master chuckled, “No need to be snide, Doctor. You can hold him, if you like,” and held out the baby, at which point the Doctor realised he was going to have to take it. Him.

“Oh,” he said, “right,” and accepted the awkward, wriggling weight. “Excellent.”

He hadn’t exactly been a hands-on parent in his first incarnation. He had still been attempting to pass as a proper Time Lord back then, of course, but a large part of his hand-off approach had been due to the fact that very young children worried him. They were so defenceless and so incomprehensible. The Doctor was used to being able to understand everyone in the universe thanks to the TARDIS’s translation circuits, but they didn’t work on babies. Although he had acted as adoptive father to a great many people since, they had all been _people_ with whom he could communicate by the time he met them. He had liked that about them.

He watched the Master with a growing feeling of desperation: surely he had almost finished dressing, but the Master seemed to be having some trouble locating his undershirt. The Doctor was about to tell him he was fairly sure it was over by the hat stand, when he felt a tug at his jumper collar.

He looked warily down at his son. And it _was_ , unmistakeably, his son he was holding. The machine had clearly favoured his superior genetic information over the Master’s mangled Trakenite DNA, picking up blue eyes, fair hair and pale skin. Which was all fair enough, the Doctor thought to himself. If he had had to choose, he would have chosen his own DNA as well, but the result, which was looking up wonderingly at him with near identical copies of his own eyes, was slightly uncanny when seen up close.

“Hello,” he tried, “I’m the Doctor.”

“Now, now, Doctor, don’t smother him with affection,” the Master — fully dressed now — said with amusement. “How will he ever be prepared for the cold reality of the real universe?” He waved at the boy, who made a high-pitched noise of delight and waved back. If the Doctor had hoped he would be relieved of child-carrying duty upon the Master’s return, he was sadly mistaken. The Master seemed to need both his hands free for peek-a-boo.

“Names are very important,” the Doctor insisted, despite the silliness going on next to him. “Particularly in our case. They are who we are. I refuse to be unfairly limited by the title ‘other daddy’. I am the Doctor, you are the Master. And anyway — I much prefer ‘father’.”

“I do apologise,” the Master said in a tone that implied it wasn’t a real apology. “Child,” he said to the boy, “this is your father. He will be the responsible one.”

“Only by comparison,” the Doctor said tartly. “However,” he continued, “as token responsible adult, I should mention that he doesn’t have a name yet. And I think I’ve made my views on the importance of names quite clear.”

“Yes, I’ve been thinking on much the same subject myself,” the Master agreed.

“I’m sure you have,” the Doctor muttered.

“What was that, Doctor?” the Master asked, looking up from where he was tickling their son’s cheek.

The Doctor smiled as though he had not heard this. “What are your suggestions, Master?”

“Since you ask, I’ve always been very fond of the name Theta.”

“ _Yes,_ ” the Doctor said. “Not a bad name, but I admit I do see a problem with it.”

“Really? And what problem is that?”

The Doctor scowled at him. “ _My_ name is Theta.”

“Oh, but you’re not using it any more,” the Master pointed out, “ _Doctor_.”

“It’s still my name. How would you like it if I suggested we call him Koschei?”

“He doesn’t look at anything like a Koschei, Doctor. Be reasonable.”

“No, you’re quite right,” the Doctor said, after a moment’s pause in which he once again assessed the child in his arms and reached almost exactly the same conclusion about the machine’s favouritism as he had earlier. “That must be your nose, though. None of mine have looked anything like that.”

“Which that makes you a very lucky boy,” the Master informed their son.

“ _Anyway,_ ” the Doctor said firmly, “having ruled out both our childhood names as possibilities, we’re still at a loss. I like David. What do you think? I think he could be a David.”

The Master looked mildly incredulous. “It’s very human.”

“Which is one of the things I like most about it. No other objections? No? Then going once, going twice—”

“David Theta,” the Master insisted.

“Sold,” the Doctor declared, “to the sinister bearded man at the back. David Theta it is. And really it could well be- mph,” he broke off as the Master kissed him. “Worse,” he managed to conclude before the Master kissed him again.

For the first time since the words “three minutes”, the Doctor felt himself relax. The feel of the Master’s lips was so familiar and welcome now, it seemed that everything was well with the universe, particularly in the corner of the vortex occupied by their interlaced TARDISes. At which point David — presumably upset at being ignored for the first time in his very short life — tugged hard on the Doctor’s hair to get his attention.

In other bodies the Doctor could have bourn it. But, as it was, he was forced to say a word he hoped never to hear from his son.

As he lay in bed later that night, he remembered that David had also been the name of the young man who’d run off with his granddaughter. All in all, the Doctor thought to himself, although it could have been worse, it could also have been a better first day.

*

He awoke very early the next morning to the sound of screaming.

“You wanted him,” he reminded the Master and, having pushed him out of the bed with one foot, went back to sleep.

When he awoke again, he was alone. This was the first time since he had begun to cohabit with the Master three months ago that such a thing had happened, and the Doctor felt slightly bereft, even as he realised that the Master must be off doing some of the serious parenting he had refused to do earlier in the day.

He made himself some toast and wandered around his TARDIS: no Master, no David, at least not in any of the obvious places. He returned to the console room and opened the door of the Doric column that was parked inside it, and had a quick look around the Master’s TARDIS too, but it was also empty.

Back in the console room, he called up the log, which dutifully informed him they’d landed on a shopping asteroid about three hours ago. The Doctor hacked into the asteroid’s main computer and found it was part of a small independent chain, which donated a reasonable percentage of its profits to the ‘Save the Space Whales’ foundation. He scanned the asteroid itself for signs of conflict and found a clean up required in Zones 4, 7, 19 and 25, three open cases of shoplifting, and a reported kidnapping, which had turned out to be a mistake.

The very niceness of the asteroid seemed vaguely suspicious, but having also called up its shopper IDents, the Doctor knew the Master and David were pottering around in the fresh food section. They were moving slowly enough that they weren’t being forced to run for their lives, and fast enough that they weren’t crouching from gunfire.

Resigned to waiting, the Doctor returned to his own TARDIS. He pulled a wicker armchair in from what had been Tegan and Nyssa’s room, put on his glasses, and began to read ‘David Copperfield’.

Not long afterwards the doors opened and the Master entered, weighed down by a number of large bags and his small son.

“Ah, good morning at last, Doctor,” he said, dropping the bags on the floor and depositing the small son in the Doctor’s lap. “I’m afraid your short tenure as the responsible parent has ended,” he explained as he shut the TARDIS door and set it into flight. “While you slept, I acquired clothing, toys, educational materials and food for our offspring.”

“Yes, so I see.”

The Doctor was not too disappointed to have missed out on the food, toys and educational materials part, but he thought the Master might have let him help pick out David’s clothes. In lieu of any guidance, he had apparently favoured the clothes of their own childhood. Consequently, David, who was currently exploring the inner pockets of the Doctor’s coat, was now the unfortunate owner of his own set of rusty red Pryadonian-style robes.

“Well, at least we’ll always be able to find him,” the Doctor observed, secretly thinking that as David was clearly interested in pockets he might be able to persuade him to swap the robe for a more practical pair of trousers later on. “And did you have a nice time shopping, David?” he asked his son to no obvious effect.

“No, quite the contrary,” the Master answered for him. “Young David, clearly unused to the people and the environment, insisted on screaming for nearly an hour, and as I was without his clothes or any proof that I was his father—”

“Aside from the nose,” the Doctor put in.

“— some idiot of a security guard hauled me in for questioning and then, when I refused to cooperate, _genetic testing._ ”

“Oh dear,” the Doctor said, carefully keeping his face free from any sign of mirth. He pushed David’s hands out of the way of his top pocket, extracted the model train he kept there and passed it to him.

“ _Naturally,_ ” the Master growled, “I passed, and the offending members of staff were dismissed — no, don’t look at me like that, Doctor: they deserved it — but it was still extremely irritating. The only bright side, aside from a substantial discount, was that the holding room they kept this troublemaker in,” he ruffled David’s hair, “was enough like the inside of your TARDIS that he calmed down.

“By which you mean, it was... white,” the Doctor supplied.

“And full of sweets,” the Master agreed. “I’m going to have a long bath. Do not disturb me.”

He stalked off, and the Doctor allowed the corner of his mouth to spasm into what someone else might have called a smirk. Gently he pulled the train out of David’s mouth and put it on the floor. This was not a popular move, but before the screaming that had woken the Doctor and nearly imprisoned the Master could begin, the Doctor handed him the copy of ‘David Copperfield’ he had been reading earlier.

“Now, this,” he explained, as David scrutinised its leather-bound cover, “is a book, and it’s a very special book for a number of reasons. It was written by a man called Charles Dickens, who was one of the greatest writers on a planet called Earth, which happens to be one of my favourite planets. It was one of the first Earth books I ever read on the advice of a very sensible woman named Barbara. Most importantly, though, it’s about a boy called David.” He pointed at the golden embossed ‘ _David_ ’ on the front cover. “Do you see? That says ‘ _David_ Copperfield’. David, which is your name — not, entirely, coincidentally.”

David looked up, clearly without comprehending what was being said to him, and made a grab for the Doctor’s glasses. “No, I’m going to need those,” the Doctor pushed his son’s hand down gently, “because, you see, there are words inside it, too.” He opened the book, closing David’s small fist around one edge. “All right,” the Doctor said. “Please attend carefully.” He cleared his throat. “Chapter One. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”

David was more fidgety as a child than he would have been in the loom, but it was actually extremely pleasant to sit reading with his son on his lap. The Doctor felt almost like a proper father: a feeling that would, he hoped, be worth the inevitable interruptions during the good bits.

“To begin my life with the beginning of my life,” he read, “I record that I was born…”

*

“…We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators, when the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was my mother, looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked home with us from church last Sunday.”

“Let me guess,” the Master said, coming up behind him, “this is the villain of the piece.”

“One of them certainly,” the Doctor agreed, as the Master settled himself against the console. “Though I think a luxurious beard is supposed to be the least of his faults.” He closed the book in his lap, and pulled off his glasses. “How long were you listening?”

“Long enough, my dear Doctor, to hear your Peggoty.”

“Ah yes. I thought I was quite convincing.”

“That’s very sweet,” the Master said. “Where’s David? Not gripped by your authentic representation of a nineteenth century Earth nursemaid?”

“No, I’m sure he was. He was just even more gripped by my twentieth century Earth model train.”

“Ah.”

“I let him get off my lap at the end of chapter one. Hmm.” The Doctor looked down and found the floor by his feet to be David- and train-free. “He must be around the other side of the console.”

The Master pushed himself to his feet and circled around to the other side, peering under the shelf. “And yet, Doctor, as I can’t help but notice, he is not.”

“What?”

“I also notice that the door is open,” the Master continued grimly as the Doctor got to his feet, and conducted his own search under the other side of the console. No train, no David.

“You _idiot,_ ” the Master continued, without any of the fondness that made it more of an endearment than an insult. “I leave you alone with him for ten minutes—”

“You left the door open.”

“—and you manage to lose our son. Through a door I admit I left open in the foolish belief that you could look after one child.”

“At least I didn’t get arrested the first time I tried to take him outside,” the Doctor snapped, his fingers flying over the TARDIS keyboard. Still working with his right hand, he held out the left in an attempt to shut the Master up as the results of his electronic search appeared on the scanner. “Right. The TARDIS says he’s still on this floor, and that his heartsrate is normal. She can’t be any more precise than that, I’m afraid, something I’ll rectify later, but for now we’ll have to split up and search. He can’t have gone far.”

“I’ll take the left,” the Master said shortly, and strode off into the TARDIS.

The Doctor hurried off in the other direction. He knew the TARDIS wouldn’t have allowed anything to happen to David, who was, at the very worst, lost and a bit upset, but that didn’t stop him breaking into a run when the Master was out of sight. He flung open door after door, in case David had crawled into an open room and then let the door fall shut behind him, but all of the rooms he entered were forlornly empty.

Eventually, once he was so far away from where he had begun that it seemed impossible David had got this far, the Doctor turned back.

He found the console room door shut. Opening it, he saw the Master arranging a long line of rail-track around the floor while David watched from where he was handcuffed to the Doctor’s chair. He didn’t seem to mind being restrained, in fact he seemed too excited by the railway emerging just feet away from him to notice, and the Doctor quietly closed the door without entering the room.

*

By the time he returned, the railway covered most of the floor, and at least three trains were making their way around the track. Gingerly, the Doctor approached the console, taking care not to crush anything beneath his feet.

Ignoring the Master’s snide, “So, you finally came back,” he programmed the console to respond to the device he had just finished making. Having done that, he stepped back across the floor to where David was sitting next to a chair that seemed to be handcuffed to itself.

“A tracking device and baby monitor,” the Doctor explained as he hung the new device around David’s neck. “And there’s a built in perception filter in there, so he won’t try and take it off until he’s old enough to look after himself. All right?”

David made a happy noise that might have been an affirmative, but (given that he was again pointing at the railway) was more likely to be an attempt at _“Look! Trains! Aren’t they the most exciting thing you’ve ever seen?”_

“Excellent,” the Doctor said. He gave the railway an approving look, and stepped back over it in one stride. “Carry on, then.”

The Master was already asleep by the time the Doctor came to bed several hours later, but he had left a note of forgiveness. It read: _“Your workmanship could well have been worse. Idiot.”_

*

The next few days passed without incident. Not entirely without incident, of course, but the things that did happen (regular meals, reading, playing with David’s trains and the glowing blocks the Master had bought on his ill-fated shopping trip, watching the Master teach David how to paint, watching David’s educational videos with David, complaining about the educational videos to the Master) were so trivial that it felt like nothing had happened at all.

For all his earlier attempts at universal domination, the Master seemed perfectly content to devote his time to these quiet pursuits. Meanwhile the Doctor could feel himself growing more restless by the day.

As much as he liked David now he was here, he couldn’t help but think he had been right not to want a child for at least another century, if at all. Aside from a general fear of small children, he just wasn’t ready to live the domestic life. What he had signed up for when he agreed to live with the Master had been essentially the same as his old life, except with fewer companions, more Master, less death, more sex, and more TARDIS to walk around in if he got bored during the night. Instead he had ended up with a companion who couldn’t talk, more Master, less death, slightly more sex, and a lot of TARDIS, which he couldn’t go into because he was busy pretending to be interested in educational videos.

He was trying to remember who had won the Ashes in 1972 instead of watching a film about trigonometry, when the Master said, “Rather than falling asleep, Doctor, you could go out and do something useful.”

“Sorry, what was that?” the Doctor asked, starting out of his reverie. “I was so engrossed with trigonometry, I didn’t hear you. Fascinating stuff. Isn’t that Pythagoras a clever chap?” he asked David, who was seated between them. David, clearly about as interested in the video as he was, continued pulling apart the end of his robe and did not answer. “I agree,” the Doctor said, as though he had. “Although his table manners were atrocious.”

“There must be planets you could save,” the Master said firmly. “I’m sure you have a list stashed away somewhere.”

“No,” the Doctor told him. “Would you believe it, I just sort of stumble into trouble most of the time.” The Master’s look said that he could well believe it. The Doctor frowned. “Besides, I’ve got important trigonometry to- Oh, all right. I’ll be back in time for dinner at six,” he said, getting to his feet. “Unless I captured or get caught up in events, which is fairly likely, but I will do my best,” he kissed the top of David’s head, “not to be,” and the Master’s forehead. “Be good, both of you.”

And he ran out into the console room, and, from there, the universe.

*

“This is all a terrible mistake,” the Doctor explained as the prison door closed behind him. “I’m supposed to be eating dinner with my son in half an hour.”

*

 _Well,_ he thought as time passed and the possibility of escape looked grim, _at least the Master will be along to rescue me in a bit. Even if it is going to be extremely embarrassing._

*

“Ah Doctor. You’re late,” the Master told him several hours later when the Doctor finally returned to the TARDIS.

“Well, it’s difficult work, toppling an entire empire,” the Doctor explained, tactfully not mentioning how much earlier he would have been if the Master had bothered to come looking for him. Instead the Master seemed to have spent his time painting a rocking-‘horse’ in the shape of a Vortisaur. It was drying now to one side of the chair the Master was sitting in, and seemed to give the Doctor a disapproving look as he removed his coat, and seated himself on the Master’s lap. “Where’s David?” he asked after an opening kiss.

“I put him to bed hours ago,” the Master said, helping the Doctor tug his jumper up and over his head.

“Ah.” The Doctor kicked his trainers off. “Then you would describe us as alone?”

“Aside from Valuncrulip over there,” the Master agreed. “The Vortisaur,” he explained.

“I see you’ve given him a rather judgemental stare. Is it supposed to cow David into submission when you’re not around?”

“Precisely,” the Master said, pulling off his jacket. “But if it bothers you, I can easily remove it,” he declared, and threw the jacket over the Vortisaur’s wooden head. “The TARDIS can wash off any marks,” he insisted as the Doctor began to protest, “and I can easily repaint Valuncrulip. Now tell me more about toppling this empire—”

“Oh, very well—”

“— in the voice of a nineteenth century Earth nursemaid, if you would.”

The Doctor sighed dramatically. “Lawk, my dear, you do have the strangest fancies, but I an’t a one to stop you on this matter. I ran into trouble, I did, almost as soon as I’d left you and Master Davy—”

“Wonderful,” the Master said, sliding a finger deep into the Doctor, who had by this point rid himself of all his clothes. “I’ve never been so aroused. Go on.”

“I didn’t know where I was, see, and there— No, I can’t,” the Doctor said, laughing, in his own voice. “Even with the Vortisaur covered up. You’re a dreadful man.”

“I would have thought you’d appreciate me taking an interest in human literature. Sit up for me, and now down — there you go.”

“Aye, and that’s true enough, Master, but I cannot help but think it a right sacrilege to the memory of that good Mister Dickens what wrote the book, to be talking in such a way in the middle of intercourse.”

“Hardly the middle,” the Master protested.

“Oh, really?”

“My dear Doctor, I intend to keep you occupied for a good many—”

At this point he was interrupted by a shrill cry that came not from the Doctor, but rather from the TARDIS console behind him. It stopped for air and then continued, louder than before. The Doctor dropped his head so that it rested against the Master’s shoulder.

“At least we know it works,” the Master pointed out over the noise of David’s screams.

“Well, it’s fine quality workmanship, but I’m sure I could break it given a little time,” the Doctor grumbled into his neck. “Ugh, I suppose I’d better go and see what he wants—”

The Master chuckled. He stroked the Doctor’s back soothingly. “Go to bed. I’ll see what ‘Master Davy’ is after, and rejoin you almost instantly.”

“Yes, all right,” the Doctor said, pulling himself off the Master and standing, “but remember to put some clothes on first.”

The Master pulled up his trousers and grabbed his painty jacket from the rocking horse. With a quick kiss, he was gone, leaving the Doctor naked in the middle of his console room with only a judgemental wooden Vortisaur for company.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” the Doctor told it, and went off to bed as the Master had advised, wondering how on Gallifrey his life had come to this.

*

The Master did not come back instantly, and so the Doctor went to sleep. When he woke up in the morning he was again alone (though the other side of the bed had apparently been slept in). And when he went into the living area to see what everyone else was doing, the Master said, “Have a nice day, Doctor,” which made it impossible not to go out and save something.

He returned three days later, having discovered the lost world of Amulhempstis and restored it to its rightful owners, the (formerly) dispossessed people of the Ironian Wastes. It had been a very good three days work, and although the Master claimed to be extremely interested, he also insisted he was very tired. David had apparently learned how to walk some time in the last week, and the Master had spent his three days tracking their lost son through the TARDIS with a remote console.

When the Doctor asked whether the Master had recorded any of David’s first steps (even though he felt his own adventures were almost certainly more thrilling), he was told, rather shortly, that there had been no time for such trivialities. When he asked whether he could go and see David and perhaps witness the walking for himself, he was told that David was asleep and it would be very unwise to wake him up at such a time.

It was this combination of events that led the Doctor to kidnap his own son in the middle of night.

The Master was, as he had explained, extremely tired, and didn’t seem to notice as the Doctor got out of bed and dressed. He took a pre-prepared note from his coat pocket and left it on his pillow. Then, without turning on any lights, he crept into David’s room (which was largely next to theirs) and very gently woke him.

“You have to be as quiet as possible,” the Doctor whispered, as he scooped his son into his arms. “Think of it as a very boring game. Can you do that for me?”

Fortunately, David was too sleepy to protest. The re-painted Vortisaur, now installed in David’s room, gave him a baleful stare, but the Doctor ignored it.

Feeling a lot like he had the night he had fled Gallifrey with Susan, he walked silently down the corridors of his TARDIS to the console room. The Master was still asleep in a part of the Doctor’s TARDIS, and so the Doctor slipped inside the Doric column the Master had foolishly left unlocked.

By this time, David was asleep again, and, although he knew it was wasting time, the Doctor strode into deeper the Master’s TARDIS, looking for his bedroom. The first couple of doors were unhelpful (kitchen, conservatory), but the third was the room the Doctor had rejected as a shared bedroom four months ago.

He left David in the large black bed, below the large black chandelier, and returned to the console room (which was also black). There he closed the doors, and dematerialised, re-materialising on a barren rock in the middle of the Bear’s Tooth Nebula. This done, he returned to the Master’s bed, and got in beside David, who snuggled into his warmth.

The Master would understand, the Doctor thought sleepily. Or at least, he would when he found the note on his pillow. It read, _Need some quality time alone with David. Will be back in about a week. Take care of my TARDIS. Sorry. Love you._

*

“Right, David,” the Doctor said firmly the next morning, “you and I are going to bond,”

They were sitting on the floor of the Master’s console room, and David was contentedly eating one of the peanut butter sandwiches the Doctor had made him earlier. He appeared not to have heard.

“Excellent,” the Doctor said. “I know we have a lot in common, besides our genetics. For example, I also like sandwiches. No, that’s ridiculous. Come on, Doctor. You can do better than that.” He wracked his brain, which dutifully produced an image of his own console room, festooned with miniature train tracks. “Ah. Did you know,” he told David, “that when I was a boy, like you are now, all I wanted to do when I was older was drive a train?

David stopped eating the sandwich and looked up at him, presumably caught out by the word train.

“That’s right,” the Doctor told him, pressing his advantage. “I didn’t really know what that entailed, but I’d seen them in books and it looked wonderful. But everyone told me it was a stupid idea, including your daddy, and now I save planets, which is fairly good, too, and,” David had returned to his sandwich, “you’re not getting any of this, are you?” No response.

“No.” the Doctor said. He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Come on, David. Give me something. I’m sure I could talk at your age. In fact,” he continued reflectively, “I’m told I was talking before I could walk. Some would tell you that I haven’t shut up since, but actually I’m frequently laconic. It’s just that, often, I have a lot of thoughts to get out.” No response.

“I hear you can walk, though, and quite well, if rumour is to be believed. I don’t suppose you’d like to show me?” No response.

“I would very much like to see it, if you can,” the Doctor pressed. “The Master’s not the only parent to take an interest in you, you know. He’s just around more often. I’m sure I would be equally impressed with your walking. It’s a very useful skill, and one that’s saved my life a number—”

He broke off at the sound of a loud wheezing, groaning noise, the feeling of a small hurricane and the sight of a large blue box materialising a yard away.

“Oh dear,” the Doctor said, as the door of his TARDIS slammed open and the Master stormed out.

“How dare you,” he snarled, looking for once like the sort of man worth being afraid of. “How _dare_ you.”

“Yes, hello Master,” the Doctor said, getting to his feet. “You’ve arrived somewhat sooner than I expected—”

“There’s a perception filter around Davids tracking device,” the Master sneered, “but you did design it, so I'd have thought you’d remember it.”

“Then, in that case, you arrived much more slowly—”

“I was unable to believe you’d actually run off. I searched the entire TARDIS before I realised mine was missing. On that note, if you’ve damaged it—”

“Of course I haven’t damaged it,” the Doctor retorted. “Hard as it may be for you to believe, Master, I’m fully capable of flying a TARDIS, even one as pedantic as yours—”

“My TARDIS is _not_ pedantic—”

“— _and_ just as capable of taking care of David—”

“—it _simply_ remembers its programming—“

“—or at least I would be if you’d let me have any part in the rearing of a boy who is supposedly our son, but who you, Master, seem to think of as a version of me you can more easily control.”

The Doctor finished this speech quite surprised to find that a) he had reached the end of it without interruption and b) the Master was no longer glowering at him, but instead grinning like he’d won.

“My dear Doctor,” he said, “if you’d been around for the last few weeks, you’d know David was no easier to control than you are.”

“Thank you, Master,” the Doctor said. “That makes me feel a lot better.”

“ _If_ you’d been around,” the Master said, “you would have also noticed that David already shows a surprising aptitude for drawing, which he did not get from you, and he can follow and repeat simple melodies. Although he has no interest in your Mister Dickens, he seemed to enjoy Morophinnaghrana’s _Solemn Verses Composed Upon the Mountain of Solitude,_ which I read to him last week. There is, my dear Doctor, just as much of me in our son as there is of you, believe me.”

“I would have been around,” the Doctor said defensively, “if you hadn’t told me to leave.”

The Master raised his eyebrows. “You wanted to leave.”

“Not… all the time,” the Doctor said, aware it was slightly weak as arguments went. “I just don’t want to settle down and live a quiet life with three kids and a dog that can’t beat me at chess.”

“No, nor—” the Master began, and then the TARDIS gave an enormous lurch, as it swung into the vortex. Both adult Time Lords careered into the console; from its other side, there was childish laughter.

“David, leave daddy’s TARDIS alone,” the Master demanded, trying to make his way around the console.

“The red lever to your right will land her,” the Doctor called to his son. “David, you have to pull the red lever, before we all—”

There was another hideous lurch and then the TARDIS shuddered to a halt.

“—die,” the Doctor finished. “Actually,” he said, checking the instruments on his side of the console, “that wasn’t a bad first landing.”

“Never do that again,” the Master was saying over the other side. “You never touch the console again without permission from me or your father, is that understood?”

The Doctor turned to look at the scanner, and broke into a smile. They had landed in the cab of an early steam locomotive, which was apparently approaching an impressive speed of 60 miles an hour.

“Train!” David observed happily from behind him. “Train!”

The Doctor turned and picked his son up in his arms. “What a clever boy you are,” he told David, hugging him tightly. “I don’t know anyone who could have done that at your age. That’s absolutely extraordinary.”

“I don’t think you should be rewarding him for almost killing us,” the Master pointed out sourly.

“We’re fine,” the Doctor told him impatiently. “And,” he said to David, “we’re on a _train_.”

“A train that doesn’t seem to have a driver,” the Master persisted, “and one that is,” he consulted the TARDIS’s instruments, “ _rapidly approaching_ the edge of a cliff. I’d say we have about five minutes.”

“I’ve always wanted to drive a train,” the Doctor said to nobody in particular. “Haven’t you?” he asked David.

“Train!” David said again.

“His first word,” the Master observed wearily. “How appropriate that it will be the thing that kills us all.” He pulled the door release. “Come on then.”

The Doctor grabbed the front of his jacket as he was leaving, and pulled him into a kiss. It was a quick one, because they only had five minutes before the train crashed, and even less time before David pulled his hair impatiently, but still. It counted.

“You were right,” he said. “Having children was a wonderful idea.”

“You’re an idiot,” the Master said fondly, and the three of them walked out into the runaway train.

**Author's Note:**

> [Prologue.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3673287/chapters/8121726)


End file.
